[Buddha-l] Korean monastic architecture

[Michael J. Wilson]

Alex,

I think the movie your daughter was watching was Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, or at least had the four seasons in the title.  I visited dozens of temples while living in Korea for almost 4 years.  To begin with, the temple in that movie was floating in a small lake and none like that exist in Korea, or else I would have read about it in Lonely Planet or somewhere and there would have been bus tours there because it would be quite a unique temple.  Most Korean temples are secluded in the mountains beside clear running streams and pine trees, even the ones found in cities.  There is a moderately famous temple in Korea called "Floating Rock" temple, but it is in the mountains and the floating rock surrounds a story of how a renowned buddhist brought some teachings from China (and possibly a Chinese princess who followed him to learn Dharma who turned into a dragon and eventually the rock but my memory of that story is a little hazy).  The temple in the movie is a fiction, in k!
 eeping
 with the slightly bizarre story of strange karma it unfolds.  As for the rooms being divided by curtains or invisible walls, temple spaces in Korea are almost always of the the one space - no walls variety - especially the small ones - and the one in this movie was small. I remember someone in my immediate Korean family commented on the walls when I asked if monks slept in the temples with room dividers like curtains but I can't remember the response.  It looked highly unusual to me.  For a while in the movie, a young woman sought refugee in the temple and slept in the same temple space with the monk, divided by this curtain - which I interpreted as being  symbolic of celibacy.  Even when the women returned years later to leave her young son with the temple monk, the boy monk and the temple monk slept in the temple space with the room divider curtain.  Your standard Son (Zen) monks slept in a one room space on the undul (heated floor) with no room dividers of any sort. Once!
  again, a
 lot in this movie was metaphorical in order to tell the story of twisted karma - at least that is how I saw it.  

While on the subject of Korean movies, I can go to the local Blockbuster and find dozens of them - mostly of the horror varierty - quite impressive for a small splittist nation.  For true horror I recommend "Phone" - but advise that you don't watch it alone.

Michael J. Wilson, (Canadian with no attitude, back bacon or tuques)

Message: 3
Date: Sun, 4 Sep 2005 10:42:38 +0100
From: "Alex Wilding" 
Subject: [Buddha-l] Korean monastic architecture
To: "Buddhist discussion forum" 
Message-ID: <010801c5b137$b1322ba0$39d4869f at m4k8m7>
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My daughter asked me if I could find out whether what I describe is a real
feature of the architecture one might find in a Korean monastery or temple,
or whether it was just a cinematic metaphor.
She told me of a film (moderately well known, I believe) set in a Korean
temple (on some kind of island in a lake - sounds like something off a
chinoiserie plate!). In the temple is a central area with a Buddha statue,
and there are a couple of rooms off. The curious feature is that although
there are doors to the rooms, there are no walls. The protagonists go from
room to room through the doors, but at a later stage go straight through the
(non-existent) walls.
It is easy to understand this simply as a metaphor, but she wonders whether
perhaps it is based on a real architectural style used in Korean monasteries
and/or temples. Can anyone tell me?
Thanks in advance
AW



		
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